White House Aides Blur the Legal Lines Between Partisans and Public Servants

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The Office of Special Counsel has recommended disciplinary action against Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, who used her official title and the White House as a backdrop as she weighed in on the Alabama Senate election.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino Jr., posted a message on his government Twitter account calling for the defeat of a Republican congressman who had angered the president.

His West Wing counselor, Kellyanne Conway, weighed in on the Alabama Senate race during television interviews from the White House lawn.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, used his White House title on a news release for Mr. Trump’s re-election bid.

All had complaints filed against them alleging violations of the Hatch Act, the federal law that since 1939 has barred government officials from using their positions to engage in partisan politics.

Over the past 14 months there have been at least eight complaints against White House officials for potential violations of the statute, according to a review by the agency charged with enforcing it. That number has put the Trump White House on a pace to far surpass the complaints against the staff of his predecessor.

A handful of high-profile violations and the increased number of complaints suggest that, more than a year after taking office, Mr. Trump — who has openly defied many norms of government ethics and transparency — is surrounded by aides who blur the line between their roles as partisans and public servants, sometimes skirting or disregarding altogether decades-old standards that govern the behavior of senior White House officials.

“This is an overall attitude this White House has about these rules, that they are just not all that important or they do not apply,” said Lawrence M. Noble, the senior director and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, the nonpartisan ethics watchdog group that filed the complaints against Ms. Conway. “There are clearly gray areas, but it’s not like occasionally they stumble into the gray areas; this seems to be willful ignoring of the rules.”

The Office of Special Counsel, the federal agency which enforces the Hatch Act, has an email inbox and telephone hotline devoted to fielding complaints, and, according to one official, has heard about more potential violations since Mr. Trump was sworn in than is typical, particularly three years before a general election campaign. Over the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, for example, the office received a total of six complaints about conduct by White House officials — a number Mr. Trump’s administration has already surpassed.

Not every complaint has led to a finding of a violation, and Mr. Trump’s aides argue that many are meritless claims by political opponents looking for ways to undercut the president. They also point to the increase in the use of Twitter and other platforms that make it more difficult to maintain a bright line between the official and the political.

“There are unprecedented efforts by outside political groups to use Hatch Act complaints as a vehicle to obstruct this administration, and exponential proliferation of social media platforms and messaging in this administration compared to any previous,” said Hogan Gidley, a deputy White House press secretary.

But the office recommended last week that Mr. Trump take disciplinary action against Ms. Conway, for having breached the statute during two television interviews late last year in which she used her official title while arguing in favor of Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, and against his Democratic rival, Doug Jones, with the White House as her backdrop. White House officials have suggested that Mr. Trump is not likely to punish her.

At the same time, the office received a complaint against Mr. Kushner for having briefed White House officials during a staff meeting in the West Wing about Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, and its recent hire of Brad Parscale to lead the effort. It was the second Hatch Act complaint lodged against Mr. Kushner in two weeks, after one that cited his use of his White House title on a Trump campaign news release announcing Mr. Parscale’s position.

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Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, briefed White House staff members about President Trump’s re-election campaign during a West Wing meeting.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

White House officials say they have made compliance with the Hatch Act a priority, providing multiple briefings to West Wing officials about how to avoid violations. The White House Counsel’s Office has stepped up its warnings to employees about the law since Mr. Trump officially kicked off his re-election bid, circulating fresh guidance from the Office of Special Counsel last week informing staff that, among other things, they must not use MAGA — the acronym for Mr. Trump’s 2016 “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — in official communications or in their social media accounts.

When she appeared on Thursday at a campaign event in western Pennsylvania for Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate in a special congressional election to be held on Tuesday, Ms. Conway made sure to note that she was there in her “personal capacity.” And when Mr. Trump tweeted on Friday to “Vote Rick” using the MAGA hashtag, Stefan C. Passantino, the chief ethics lawyer in the counsel’s office, circulated an email warning White House officials not to retweet it, according to White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal communications.

Previous administrations have also run afoul of the Hatch Act, particularly in the run-up to presidential elections. Two Obama administration cabinet officials — Kathleen Sebelius, his secretary of health and human services; and Julián Castro, his secretary of housing and urban development — were cited for violations during Mr. Obama’s eight-year term, and a third, Hilda L. Solis, the secretary of labor, was investigated before she resigned.

Concerned about appearing to use his office or his administration improperly to boost Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, Mr. Obama barred members of his cabinet from addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Office of Special Counsel has found violations by at least three officials, including Ms. Conway. It issued a warning letter to Mr. Scavino for a tweet calling for the defeat in a primary of Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, who had been critical of the president. And it reported last year that Nikki R. Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations, had breached the Hatch Act in June by retweeting Mr. Trump’s endorsement of a South Carolina congressional candidate.

Many other complaints have been investigated and dismissed. The office received a flood of calls in January, during a brief government shutdown, after the White House comment line informed callers that their inquiries could not be answered “because congressional Democrats are holding government funding for our troops and other national security priorities hostage to an unrelated immigration debate.”

While the use of a taxpayer-funded public comment line to spread a partisan message was unusual in the view of many ethics experts, it was not considered a violation of the Hatch Act because it did not advocate for or against any one candidate.

The administration can largely decide how strictly to enforce the Hatch Act, because the agency charged with policing it has no power to mete out discipline. The Office of Special Counsel refers violations by White House officials and presidential appointees to the president, who decides whether and how to punish them. In cases involving rank-and-file federal employees, the office can request disciplinary action by the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial agency.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have suggested in recent days that they take a relatively narrow view of the conduct prohibited by the Hatch Act, which has exemptions only for the president and the vice president. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week that Ms. Conway’s interviews — in which she clearly expressed support for Mr. Moore and opposition to Mr. Jones — did not violate the Hatch Act because she was expressing the president’s policy position.

The White House Counsel’s Office had made the same assertion to the Office of Special Counsel, which rejected the argument in its report reprimanding Ms. Conway. The office said the position “lacks merit,” and “would render meaningless the Hatch Act’s prohibition against using one’s official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

If the White House’s position were adopted, the office said, “federal employees in their official capacity would be free to express electoral preferences and claim immunity from the Hatch Act by hiding behind the president’s statements about candidates and declaring they were merely carrying out their official duties in support of the administration’s agenda.”

Watchdog groups said they were concerned that the argument gave tacit permission to Trump administration officials to disregard the law.

“The White House made clear that not only are they not going to take disciplinary action, but they didn’t even accept the finding of a clear-cut case,” said Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group that filed the complaints against Mr. Kushner. “Which seems to send the message to White House employees that they can do whatever they like.”

Correction:

Earlier versions of this article misstated the process for punishing infractions. Cabinet secretaries have no role in disciplining violators of the law; that decision is made either by the president, or by the Office of Special Counsel, which can request that the Merit Systems Protection Board take disciplinary action.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Top Aides’ Actions Blur Legal Lines Around Partisanship. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe